Program will reportedly begin with iOS 8.3 and, eventually, 9.0.

Further Reading

According to a new report from 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman, Apple will soon begin releasing public beta builds of iOS to consumers in the hopes of tracking down and squashing more bugs. The program will reportedly begin with iOS 8.3, the first build of which has already been released to developers, and will extend to iOS 9 after Apple introduces it at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple launched a similar public beta program for OS X in April of last year. It began with OS X 10.9.3, the third update to Mavericks, and was followed by a large public beta program for OS X Yosemite. The Yosemite beta was limited to the first million customers who signed up, but Gurman reports that the iOS betas will be capped at 100,000 customers "to maintain a higher level of exclusivity." Currently, iOS betas require a $99-per-year developer account, and developers have to enroll their devices' unique identifiers (UDIDs) with Apple for the beta builds to work.

Public beta programs are generally win-win for enthusiasts and companies—consumers get to try a Shiny New Thing before anyone else, while companies get a wider pool of testers to give them feedback and bug reports. Microsoft has long offered beta and release-candidate builds of its operating systems to the public, and the Windows 10 preview program for desktops and phones is its most extensive yet. iOS 9 will reportedly be focused primarily on speed and stability, and more testers will help Apple achieve that goal.

iOS 8.3 betas will reportedly be available to the public in March and iOS 9 betas will be available in the summer, though those timelines are obviously subject to change. We'd expect an iOS 9 public beta to follow the same track as the Yosemite beta last year—developer beta builds will be issued first and more frequently, and public builds will be issued later at a slower clip to minimize bugginess.

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Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites